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.PeterSarsgaard, Denise Richards.And Fat Joe as Victor s rival Tito.We gothim in there to keep it real and, you know, add some weight to theproceedings.Then I convinced Franc to let us use the Spike and Baz Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends 237*method of workshopping a lot.He was cool about taking the bestimprovs from those sessions and working them into the script.Which made it a better movie all around.I ended up being a co-producer on it.Even helped get investors,who are usually these rich business guys who want to be in showbiz.Suckaz.How do you become a millionaire in show biz? You startout a billionaire.I spent time hanging out with some drug dealers to research thepart of Victor.I grew up with a lot of gangsters in my neighborhood,and I thought they were cool as shit.But I never did any of the runswith them, I just hung with them.They taught me how to rap to girlsand how to fight.We played handball and basketball all day, smokedsome doobies, but that s as far as I went.Somehow my parents fearof drugs limited me just to smoking weed, while everybody else wasdoing acid, coke, PCP, angel dust.For researching Victor, I hung out first with a Dominican couplein Washington Heights, a poor and mostly Latin neighborhood onManhattan s way-Upper West Side, and then with two Puerto Ricanbrothers who were dealing heroin in Alphabet City.It took a fewweeks to get them comfortable with the idea.We spent a lot of timein restaurants just talking while they sussed me out.I did everything with those two brothers.Watched them pack theheroin into nickel and dime bags.Went with them to store their dopeand their wads of cash in different people s homes in the neighbor-hood, spreading it around so if they got busted or ripped off theywouldn t lose too much from any one location.They used all sortsof normal, poor Spanish folks homes in the neighborhood evena French professor, a sanitation worker, like that.These people gottaken care of for providing the service.Victor explains how it works in the film: I keep my money in nine places.An apartment that belonged 238 JOHN LEGUIZAMO*to some old woman who can t afford to live there, bodegas, a blindman s place, a principal s office, all over.I pay their rent, give themsome grocery cash, and in return they keep it safe for me. I went out to Jackson Heights with the brothers to pick up theirsupplies.We went into a lot of bars where they d be resupplying, andpeople would recognize me and start schmoozing me.It was bizarre.I got offered a lot of coke in the bathrooms of those bars.As rewardfor my good work on the screen, you know.Fortunately, I guess, cokeis not for me.I m already wired enough.They showed me what the undercover cops look like.If you seea parked van with the windows all blacked out, that s the cops, be-cause blacking out the rear window is illegal in New York.That kindof scared me.I started to worry about getting caught up in a bust.Because I couldn t use the I-was-only-doing-research excuse.Thatwas played out when Winona Ryder got busted shoplifting.I wasn tafraid at first, but the more I learned about what I was doing withthese guys, the more I got scared.But they re impressive people, these two.They were kids, eigh-teen, nineteen years old, and already they d been shot and arrested.They were so charming and bright, and great businessmen.Theyhad maybe forty people working for them, a whole hierarchy workedout with promotions and raises and a 401(K) program.They take careof your family if you get shot and go to the hospital or get arrested.Acomplete system based on loyalty and payback.The Washington Heights couple was very ambitious, very togetherabout their entrepreneurial trip as well.They were putting their kidsthrough the fanciest Upper East Side schools.They d go and film theschool plays, just like all the other parents.When the husband gotarrested and put behind bars on Rikers Island, I went to visit him.Hetold me there s more drugs in there than on the street.The violence Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends 239*in there, people getting their throats cut and such, scared the hell outof him.He d gotten popped because they got careless they startedusing the heroin they were dealing, the classic dealer s downfall.Youuse, you lose.In a lot of ways, their story was very similar to the story of thecouple on whom Abel Ferrara based his movie R-Xmas, which I wasgoing to star in for a while.Abel s a genius, but he s also a maniac.He s brilliant, but he creates a lot of chaos around him, and I couldn tdeal with the disorganization.I m too anal.I helped out with R-Xmasfor a while, just trying to create some order.I started typing into thecomputer, fixing the script.I d say, Yo, Abel, the structure s a little loose, a little sloppy. He d start riffing on the spot, making up new dialogue out of hishead, brilliant ideas.I was so impressed. What would she say here? He d go, Well, she d say. yadda yadda, and it was hot.Abel s one of the true characters of American filmmaking.Hewalks this world like Nosferatu.He looks like a bum.Hunchedover, hair a mess, nails black, and he speaks in this guttural growl.He d say, You wanna beer? Then he d look in the fridge and therewouldn t be any, so he d go around to all the open bottles and canslying all around the place and pour all the dregs into a glass and holdit out to me.With those black nails. No, man, thanks.I don t drink. Really? When did ya quit? Just now. From then on I d bring beers with me when I went to work.In the end I couldn t commit the time to help him get that movietogether.I had to go Catholic on it I pulled out before I shot
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